PICTURE MAKING By Charles Sims The second part of the
volume of notes on painting by Charles Sims entitled Picture Making : Technique and Inspiration (Seeley Service, 21s.) is occupied by a life of the artist by his son Mr. Alan Sims. The writer presents an interesting and somewhat unexpected picture of his father as a naturally rebellious artist who deliberately repressed his desire to develop along individual and novel-lines, partly from timidity and partly from a sort of faithfulness to the Academy. Only in his last works, the Sacraments and the Spirituals, did he really allow himself complete freedom, and these works are perhaps too obviously the first excursions into a new realm. One cannot help feeling that, had he lived, Sims would have overcome the crudeness of the symbolism and the flutteriness of the designs. The remarks on painting which form the earlier part of the book are of uneven value. The bulk of them deal with technical questions and are notes on the artist's own methods of working. As such they are of interest to the general reader and will probably be useful to artists who admire the effects achieved by Sims. On the other hand, there are certain chapters in which the writer tackles more general problems of aesthetics, and in these he is not so successful. In one he makes a confused attack on Cezanne and certain of his contemporaries, and in another he discusses the Laws of Taste in a manner which suggests that he did not even notice the existence of the most important problems involved in such a discussion.
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